


We'll Never Be Those Kids Again

by okaynowkiss



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: M/M, Post-The Raven King, Pre-Epilogue
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-08-19 01:18:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,348
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8183348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okaynowkiss/pseuds/okaynowkiss
Summary: Takes place in the 24 hours after Gansey dies on the side of the road at the end of The Raven King.Ronan's going through a lot and Adam wants to be there for him. Also, everything made in a dream might be in trouble.





	

Rain fell. In the wet grass at the side of the road, Adam, Blue, Ronan, and Henry watched with eyes wide and breaths held as Gansey blinked himself awake, looking perplexed. He stared up into Blue’s eyes and said, “Huh?”

Ronan’s head dropped into his hands, his shoulders shaking with relief.

Adam breathed out with a sound he didn’t immediately recognize as coming from himself. Cold, nauseous relief washed over him. Gansey had _died_.

Blue wrapped her arms around Gansey as he sat up, pulling him half into her lap and trying to tell him what had happened. She was giddy, laughing and crying at once. Gansey was confused, but she was happy enough that it made him happy, too. There was blood smeared on her face and drying in her hair on one side, where her stitches had been pulled open, but she didn’t let it slow her down.

Adam had to turn away. Not for the first time, he couldn’t process the emotion of what was happening as quickly as the others. This was too good to be real.

But it _was_ real: Gansey was okay. Adam had to keep thinking it before he could start to feel it. Gansey had _died_. But they’d done it, they’d actually—

He breathed and turned back, needing to see it again. Blue extricated herself gently from Gansey, laughing, and crawled over to sit near Ronan.

Gansey and Ronan looked at each other for a long moment. Adam couldn’t see Ronan’s face, just the back of his shaved head, and the broken line of his shoulders. The naked emotion on Gansey’s face as he came closer to Ronan meant that Ronan was a wreck, though. Gansey wrapped his arms around him and Ronan resisted at first, thrusting his arms between them. Gansey gripped the back of his neck, and maybe said something into Ronan’s ear, and then Ronan submitted to it. It seemed awfully private, and Blue and Henry politely looked away and talked to each other instead of watching. Ronan buried his head in Gansey’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around his waist, and his shoulders shook, and Adam tipped his head back and let the rain soak his face.

The dark gray of the angriest clouds had passed, and the rain was slowing, and to the east, over the hills, blue sky broke between the clouds.

When Adam looked back, Ronan and Gansey had separated, and Ronan had his phone out and pressed to his ear, and Adam caught: “Matthew,” Ronan’s voice heavy and content. He wiped at his face with his arm. Gansey and Henry were experimentally bumping their fists together, and Henry’s happy laugh rose up from the cluster of teens.

Blue turned her smile toward Adam and held out a hand to him. He collapsed onto the grass on one side of her, Ronan on the other. She scooted closer to Adam and tugged Ronan with her, looped an arm around each of them, and pulled their heads into a hug. “Thanks. Thank you. Thank you,” she said, because the three of them had done this. Adam pressed his head against her neck, the curve of his brow bone fitting in the hollow.

“I can’t believe it,” Adam said. The feeling in his chest threatening to spill out got bigger and bigger until he couldn’t hold it anymore, didn’t want to. He was so happy he could cry. Having both Blue and Ronan so close was alien and nice, any movement from any of them felt in all three of their bodies. Only Blue was really hugging them, in that neither boy had arms around anyone else, but they were leaned up against her obligingly.

Ronan broke it up by reaching up with both hands and messing both Adam’s and Blue’s hair enthusiastically, so they separated scoffing, shoving his hands away. Adam touched Ronan’s arm and their eyes met. They broke into identical smiles at the same moment.

Ronan’s face was filthy with blood and worse, and marks were darkening on his neck. Adam couldn’t look any better, and his shoulder didn’t feel quite right. Still, Adam felt so stupidly happy that he had to look away from Ronan, but then he was just looking at _Gansey_ , and that was no better—

He couldn’t even speak to Gansey. He couldn’t begin to know what to say because everything was too big. In some way he knew that this was a continuation of the moment in the courtroom when Gansey had shown up for him. Gansey’s expression caught, like he was on the verge of saying something. Adam sensed that there was a question in it, something for Adam to confirm. Gansey said, rather formally, “So, it’s done, then?”

 _Oh, Gansey_ , Adam thought— “ _Yeah_.” The demon was dead and Gansey was safe from imminent death. Adam smiled in the way he had smiled at Ronan: helpless to stop it. “Yeah.”

Gansey laughed a little and rubbed a hand over his face, and it made Adam laugh too. Moving with surprising speed for someone who had just died, Gansey’s smile turned big and wolfish—which, on Gansey, looked a lot like mischievous—and he leapt forward and tackled Adam to the grass. Whoops and laughter rose up from the others. Adam sputtered and tussled with him, laughing, and Gansey was right, it was good, every shove of Gansey’s knees into Adam’s legs and every push of their hands on the other’s face as they wrestled proved that they were both alive. His shoulder hurt when he hit the ground but he didn’t stop.

They flopped apart after rolling a few feet. Gansey turned his head to Adam’s in the grass. “I’m alive,” he said, grinning.

Adam said, “Yup,” a smile on his face so big that it felt unfamiliar in his cheek muscles.

He pushed himself up onto his elbows and watched as Gansey stood and went to Blue, who was trying to wipe some of the black, drying stuff from Ronan’s face, and Ronan, who was making it difficult for her. “May I cut in?”

Blue said to Ronan, “Yeah, but your face is still all gross,” and he flipped her off.

Ronan allowed himself to be pulled up, and clapped his hands on top of Gansey's shoulders. Like Adam, Ronan was rarely physical in that particular way: the confident, friendly hands clapped onto another’s boy’s person so typical of kids whose dads owned boats. If _Ronan_ was physical, there was a sarcastic tint to it. But unlike Adam, he wasn’t incapable of it. He'd grown up with brothers and a father who loved him.

Gansey plucked one of Ronan's hands from his shoulder and held it out, and put his other hand on Ronan's waist. He spun the them in a fairly competent waltz step. "What the fuck," Ronan scoffed, even as he stepped where he was supposed to. "I'm taller, at least let me lead."

"Oh, _please_ ," Gansey said, and with a healthy amount of shoving and elbows they rearranged themselves and Ronan threw them into a less gentle version of the dance. His involved spinning Gansey while trying to trip him. Gansey kept his footing, because Ronan wasn't being mean about it, and because he clearly kind of knew how to dance. The thought occurred to Adam: they'd done this before. Once he thought it he knew it was right. The idea evoked strange, long nights at Monmouth, before Adam and before Blue, when the two of them had forged their relationship. Adam wished he could look in on them back then. Maybe Noah could tell him about it.

Only—would Noah still be there at all?

For a moment, all of the still-unknown things that Gansey's death-and-rebirth had not solved reared up in Adam's mind: Cabeswater was gone, so what was there now and what did it mean for Adam's bargain? For Ronan? For Noah? They'd killed one demon, did that mean they were safe? From the other magical artifact dealers, as well?

Blue and Henry laughed and catcalled Gansey and Ronan as they fought for the lead and both tried to dip the other, so that there was less dancing happening and more a formal, standing wrestling match, which ended when Ronan succeeded in getting Gansey to lean back over his arm. "I know you're going to drop me, so don't think it's clever," Gansey said. Ronan flashed his teeth, released his grip for half a heartbeat, and caught Gansey before he hit the ground. He righted him and brushed imaginary dirt off Gansey's shoulders for him. "Thanks," Gansey said, and it wasn't weighty but it wasn't joking, either. He meant for everything, for the big thing.

Ronan held his gaze. "No problem. Thanks for killing that demon," he said.

"No problem," Gansey agreed.

Ronan turned and whistled for Chainsaw. She swooped out of the branches of a tree a couple hundred yards away and flew to Ronan's shoulder, as if she’d been waiting for this. Her feathers were ruffled, and she kept rearranging her footing, but she calmed down a little when Ronan stroked her head. She gave a choked-off cry that Adam had never heard before.

Distantly, Adam heard the sound of a police siren. It died out as soon as it started, as though the cop had used it to get past traffic. It was miles away, and Adam didn't think they could get in trouble for parking near a bunch of dream objects and some stray blood, but... Actually, the blood might be a problem.

"Let's get out of here," Ronan said, glancing around.

Adam nodded at him, grateful. "Yeah, I don't want to have to explain the river of blood." When he said it they all turned to look at it, seeping blackly on the road as the rain washed it away.

"I couldn't explain it if I wanted to," Blue said, nose scrunched up. The blood was attracting a few hopeful insects, and there would've been more if it wasn't cold and wet out.

While Adam brushed gravel from his clothes and hair, and the others got ready to go, Ronan stalked to the tall grass near the fence, and nudged some fallen branches with his foot. "Come on," Adam heard him say, presumably to Orphan Girl. Sure enough, all of them heard her sad, shouted reply, although it was in a language none of them could speak.

"I know, we'll come back later," Ronan said. He sounded annoyed, but it was still an uncharacteristically considerate answer.

"Where to?" Henry asked, once they were all up and Ronan had rejoined them. Orphan Girl skulked off by the blood, toeing at it. Ronan eyed her, but didn't say anything. Probably as long as she didn't try to eat it he would let her alone.

They decided on Fox Way with little discussion. They had Henry's and Ronan's cars here, and Gansey said he would give Henry directions.

Adam was grateful to Blue for riding with him and Ronan. It made it more okay to be separated from Gansey if all three of them were doing it. Adam sensed that he was going to have to start thinking of Henry as one of them, too, but he couldn't get his head around it yet.

Blue flopped into the backseat, and helped Orphan Girl buckle her seatbelt when Ronan opened the far door and shoved her in. Orphan Girl slithered out of the shoulder belt at once and tucked up her legs so the lap belt only crossed her hoofed ankles. She liked being curled tightly when she wasn’t moving. "Good enough," Blue said. Adam took the front seat even though he was going to have to sit sideways the whole time to hear anyone talk.

Ronan ducked into the car and thrust Chainsaw in Adam’s direction: "Can you hold her? She's freaked, I don't want to let her fly while we're out here."

"Sure," Adam said, and held her to his chest as he had seen Ronan do. She bucked once, trying to spread her wings, but when he stayed firm and gentle she relented and tucked down her head, picking at Adam's shirt.

Ronan sent a look her way as he started the engine, concern on his face. "What?" Adam asked, but Ronan just shook his head and pulled out into the road. A thought struck Adam: "Ronan. Did you understand Orphan Girl a minute ago, what she said? It wasn't Latin, though, was it?"

"Nah," Ronan said. "I just knew what she wanted. I'm..." He hesitated, and looked in the rear view mirror.

"What is it?" Blue asked, leaning forward between their seats. He'd been checking on her, not Orphan Girl, evidently.

Ronan shook his head and looked away. He said something toward his window that Adam didn't catch over the noise of the engine.

"What?" Adam asked again.

"I don't know—" Ronan began, frustrated, and Adam's cheeks burned.

"No," he interrupted. "Just, I couldn't hear you."

Ronan rolled his eyes, but not cruelly. Like he was annoyed at himself. "Sorry," he said curtly, which everyone in the car knew meant he was embarrassed. He met Adam's eyes and nodded at him once, a very small motion. Adam nodded back. He felt pleased and also wanted to disappear.

"He said it feels weird," Blue prompted loudly. "Cabeswater being gone. And there's a hole back there that hurts. Not that last part," she added, "that was me."

Ronan caught her eyes in the rearview mirror. "Yeah," he agreed. "Like, empty. Like something's supposed to go there. I don't know, though. What about you?" he asked Adam.

"I don't feel anything," Adam admitted, looking between him and Blue. He was twisted three quarters of the way around and Blue was practically in the front seat, she was sitting so far forward. "Where it used to be in my head, when I'd reach out—there's nothing. Not an absence like you guys said. There's just nothing." Like it was never there at all, he didn't add. Like he had never been anything but the unexceptional boy he was.

"Hey, whoa," Blue said, around a scuffling in the backseat. Orphan Girl was scratching at the seat back, as though trying to get into the trunk. When she didn't get anywhere, she pushed herself up and touched the back windshield, face pressed to it.

"What the hell are you doing?" Ronan asked, hand tight on the gearshift.

" _Kerah_ ," she implored, looking at him over her shoulder. In Adam's hands, Chainsaw gave a similar-sounding cry and tried again to flutter. She thrust her wings out more forcefully, and Adam was too afraid of hurting her to contain her. He and Ronan both got wings in the face and the car swerved dangerously before Adam had her again.

“Shit, sorry,” Adam said.

In the backseat, Orphan Girl skittered her hands across the window and cried, “Aucilum, aucilum, Kerah.”

“What’s going on?” Blue asked.

Ronan cursed under his breath. “I don’t know,” he said tightly. He shifted into fifth gear and kept his foot on the gas, leg flexed to brace him as he shifted his hips up, reached a hand into his pocket, and tugged out his phone. He tipped it into Blue's lap. "Something’s up with them. Call Matthew." He grabbed the gearshift again, tight enough that the veins of his hand bulged out. The BMW flew down the road, so far ahead of Cheng’s car now that they could only see flashes of it when it changed lanes.

Blue held the phone to her ear. After a long moment, in which the call presumably went to voicemail, she lowered the phone again and hit a few buttons before returning it to her ear. No one in the car spoke. But then Blue made a happy sound. "Matthew!" she said. "Hang on." She held the phone in front of her and hit speakerphone. "It's Blue, and Ronan and Adam are here. You're on speaker. Can you hear me?"

"Kinda," Matthew's voice answered. "It's loud."

"Sorry, we're in the car," Blue said.

Off to the side, Matthew said something that sounded like, "Hang on, I'm coming." Into the phone, he said, "What's up?"

"You're fine?" Ronan said, turning his head to project it toward the phone. Blue held it up for him obligingly.

"Tchyeah," Matthew said. "Didn't you just call me a second ago?"

"I don't know," Ronan said. "Yeah." He sounded tired. Adam held Chainsaw a little closer to his heart.

"'Kay," Matthew agreed.

"Matthew," Blue said, bringing the phone back down to the middle. "Could you please call us if anything at all is wrong? If anything seems weird even a little. Okay?"

"Yyyyeah, okay," he said, his attention clearly elsewhere.

"Okay, we'll talk to you later," Blue said. Adam caught her eye and she shrugged. He looked at Ronan too, but Ronan didn't turn.

"Later!" Matthew said.

"Bye," Ronan and Adam said together.

Blue tucked the phone into one of the cup holders and sat back. “What’s going on?” she asked again, more quietly.

“They’re messed up,” Ronan said. “Because Cabeswater’s gone.”

“They’re okay,” Adam said, looking at Chainsaw’s ruffled feathers. “They’re just... not used to it.” If he didn’t need both hands to hold Chainsaw, he could have touched Ronan’s shoulder to reassure him.

Ronan’s eyes searched Adam’s face. He didn’t look convinced.

In back, Orphan Girl sank into her curled-up position. She was fully out of the seat belt at this point. There was not much else to say. The magic of Gansey being alive was not going to wear off any time soon, but now that they'd caught their breath it settled on all of them that this was not the end of the story.

+

Ronan wasn't dumb enough to hope for answers at 300 Fox Way, but the women there _were_ psychics, some of them even good ones, so there was an off chance one of them would toss out something useful.

Ronan wanted to go home—it was all over, and he needed to go think about his mom—but he could wait for that if it meant seeing Gansey for awhile longer. When they pulled up to Blue’s house, Ronan steeled himself for Gansey's tousled hair, and his golden arms, and his kind hands, and everything else. Still, he was dumbstruck when Gansey got out of Henry Chang's car and smiled at all of them. At least Blue and Adam were the same, no one speaking for a second and then all of them laughing. Blue skipped over to Gansey and hugged him. Gansey squeezed just her hair in his hand, which was pointless and romantic. Ronan opened the back door of the BMW and tapped Orphan Girl's hoof. "Don't be stupid, you _like_ it in there."

She shook her head and looked at him balefully, but scampered out of his grasp when he reached for her again, and clomped down onto the ground. She cantered off around the side of the house. Ronan looked at Adam and shrugged. Good enough. "What about her?" Adam asked, fanning his bruised fingers to reveal more of Chainsaw's sleek feathers. He was still holding her in a little bundle against his chest.

"See what she wants to do," Ronan suggested, and they both watched as Adam lifted his scraped-up hands from her. She ruffled her feathers and did a sort of bird shrug, holding Adam's finger and shirt in her claws to stand. Ronan smoothed a knuckle down her chest.

She was warm from Adam, which made Ronan want to crash his car into something. Or it made him want to touch Adam's palm.

"Well?" he said to Chainsaw.

She nipped her beak at him a few times, friendly, then ruffled her feathers again and took off in a burst of wings.

Adam watched her go and Ronan watched Adam's face as long as he thought he could get away with it, which was not very long at all, because he hadn't been getting away with it for months.

He looked away. Blue, Gansey, and Cheng trailed into the bright blue house. When Ronan looked back at Adam, he wished he hadn't, because Adam was looking between Ronan's collarbone and jaw and wincing. "Man, Ronan," he said, and hovered a hand up near Ronan's neck.

"It's fine," Ronan snapped, and shoved his hand away. “You don’t look so hot either.” (Adam looked bloodied and exhausted, and beautiful in a way that physically hurt Ronan.)

Adam's face closed up a little. “Yeah, okay,” he said, sounding tired and older.

Ronan regretted being harsh, but it was a hard habit to break. It had been his only option for a long time. But now there was another option, a possibility: if he was quiet and kind, Adam might be quiet and kind back.

The thing was, right now Ronan didn’t want anyone to be too kind to him, because he had already cried earlier and that had just been about Gansey not being dead. At least, if it had been about his mom, also, nobody had brought it up. Now, if anyone tried to comfort him, he was actually going to lose it.

Adam watched him shrewdly, without hostility. To Ronan’s relief, he said nothing. He bumped Ronan’s shoulder and they went inside.

First aid was administered, and faces were cleaned and dry clothes were passed around, but mostly, it was a party. There were non-disgusting drinks served, although disgusting ones were still encouraged. Ronan liked one of the teas that tasted like grass, and although he had never said this, someone always gave it to him.

They told the story once, all together, very dramatically.

Then they told it again when Orla and Jimi showed up, and _then_ they got into the meat of it. "But what do you think it means that Cabeswater sacrificed itself for him?" Blue asked. "Like, Gansey, do you feel... human?"

"Very human," he said.

Calla held out a hand to him. He looked at Blue, and then placed his hand in Calla's. "Oh," she laughed. "Well, yes, decently human. It's like—" She looked to Maura for help.

"I don't have any idea," Maura said, raising her hands in defeat. "Do go on."

"I didn’t know what it was before. They tried very hard to make sure you were human," Calla said. "And I feel her—" she touched Blue's cheek— "in there." Blue ducked her head. "And him, I think," she said, and inclined her fingertips toward Adam. Adam reached out and ghosted his hand over hers. "Yes. It's so strange," Calla said. Adam dropped her hand, looking a little choked up. Ronan took a step closer to him, even though he knew it was going to make Calla scoff, which she did. "And you, obviously," she said, and pinched Ronan's cheek before he ducked out of her grasp, sputtering. "But I already knew what you felt like," she said, smiling like it was a trick. "I was going to say, it's strange, I've never been able to feel the forest before, and now..."

Adam began to speak and stopped himself.

"It was so sad to lose you," Calla said suddenly, looking right at Adam. She was still holding Gansey's hand. Ronan stood up even straighter, glad that he was between her and Adam.

"About that," Adam said. "It kind of... said goodbye to me. I think because it's changed—" he flapped a hand in Gansey's direction and then shrugged apologetically— "the bargain's finished. Is that right?" He looked at Calla, then at Ronan, too, and around at the rest of them.

"That's between you and Cabeswater," Calla said. "But I used to be able to feel something, a lock, something, and now I don't. But that doesn't mean much of anything."

Adam nodded, and looked to Ronan.

"I won't know 'til I dream," Ronan said. "I can do it now." Except then he remembered that he couldn't, because his mother was in there, or probably she _wasn't_ anymore, since the whole area where her body had lain no longer existed. And her not being there was even worse. What _would_ be in his dreams, now?

"No, it's—it can wait," Adam said. Which meant there was something private about the question for him, too. So that was fine. That worked out.

+

At some point, Blue and Maura disappeared upstairs to either lend clothing or have a heart-to-heart talk. The rest of the group went to do something Gwenllian related, and Adam and Ronan were left alone.

They sat on mismatched towels to avoid getting the house muddy, Adam on the floor and Ronan on the couch. Maura had offered them some of Mr. Gray’s clothes to wear while she washed theirs, but they’d both turned it down.

Adam stood, tossed his towel on the couch cushion next to Ronan, and sat down right next to him, warm shoulders pressed together.

Ronan ran a thumb over the leather bracelets on his wrist.

Adam covered the bracelets with his hand and asked, “We did good, right?”

Ronan lifted his gaze to him. He wasn’t sure, but he nodded yes anyway.

+

Awhile later, Maura and Calla were making dinner for everyone, with Adam and Blue’s help.

Ronan went outside to look for Orphan Girl. It wasn’t strange for her to be gone this long, but it was strange that she didn’t want to poke around inside Fox Way. All the weird smells in there were usually irresistible to her.

He was walking along the side of the house, stepping from stone to stone, when a pair of voices made him stop.

“You should ask him, I’m just saying, he’s gonna say no,” said Adam, from around the corner. The sound of his voice put him just beyond the back door of the house. Ronan glanced at the wall next to him: no windows at the right height for anyone to see him. He didn’t move.

“I don’t want him to be alone, though,” Blue murmured. “Gansey says he’ll just want to go back to the Barns.”

A subtle, unpleasant thrill shot through Ronan. They were talking about him.

“Gansey’s probably right,” Adam said. He sounded like he had something in his mouth. His sleeve, maybe. “I’m hoping he’ll let me come with him, though.”

“Oh yeah?” Blue said, something of a laugh in her voice.

If Adam replied, it wasn’t verbally.

Sounding more serious, Blue said, “Really, though. You’ll look out for him?”

“You really have to ask?” Adam said. “Come on, let’s go in.”

Ronan gave them a couple minutes to get inside and away from the door. He stomped into the backyard and poked around until he found Orphan Girl behind a lantana bush. She was curled up on the ground, apparently asleep. He tapped her with his boot, but she just covered her ears with her hands and made herself even smaller, so he left her out there.

At the back door, he discovered Chainsaw playing in the fallen leaves, and let himself feel some relief as she alighted on his shoulder. At least _she_ was acting more normal.

Why had Ronan never thought to dream a tracking device for Matthew’s phone, or something like that? Then he’d know that he was okay.

Ronan wanted to sleep but not dream, a feat he wasn’t sure he could pull off. He also wanted to eat, and shower the smell of grass and demon from his hair. He could do those things at Blue Sargent’s house, but he really, really wanted to go home. He didn’t know how much longer he could walk around so far from the Barns. He was stretched thin. Soon his lungs were going to stop working altogether.

+

Adam was sitting on a bench in the kitchen window next to Henry Cheng with a plate of steamed vegetables and chicken sprinkled with bacon balanced on his knees, when Ronan ducked into the room. “Absolutely no birds in here,” Calla said, pointing a finger at him.

“She’ll be good,” Ronan said. He set Chainsaw on the ground in the direction of the living room, and she hopped away to explore.

Perhaps because it was so rare for Ronan to acquiesce even that much, Calla appeared to let it go. It could’ve also been because Ronan looked particularly pathetic in his filthy clothes and with his wrung neck. That wasn’t the worst part, though: he was vague in a way Adam had never seen him. Even when he was stumbling drunk, Ronan was intense about whatever he was doing. It unnerved Adam to see him without that.

Adam wanted to stay here at Blue’s, because it was friendly and there was lots of food and he felt reasonably safe, but he could see that Ronan could not stay here. So Adam wanted to go with him.

Maura got Ronan a plate and filled it with food and Blue brought him out to the living room, where there might still be a seat to be found.

Adam listened to Henry and Maura and Calla talk, and responded when he had to, but the food was good and he was very hungry, and once he started to get full he also started to get sleepy. He could tell from the general level of noise in the house, which was lowering steadily through dinner, that the rest of the teens were flagging, too.

Later still, when Adam was washing dishes in the sink after plates had been pushed aside and pie had been offered around, Maura said to Blue, “Okay, daughter, that bandage isn’t holding. Time for a quick hospital visit.”

“ _Mom_ ,” Blue protested, “I’m fine.”

Adam placed the last dish in the drying rack and wiped his hands on a dish towel. When he turned to them, it was clear that Blue was not fine. There was blood running down her cheek from her newly opened wound, despite the bandage they’d optimistically placed over it upon arriving at Fox Way. Maura must have known her first aid wasn’t going to cut it in this case, but was letting Blue stay with the rest of them as long as she could.

“You’ll be even more fine with just a few more stitches,” Maura said. “Now, the rest of you,” she said, and surveyed the kitchen. Gansey and Henry were seated at the kitchen table, slowly playing war with a deck of non-tarot cards. Ronan was watching them, sullen and slouched, and not saying much. Only Gansey and Henry looked up at Maura’s words.

“ _Just for tonight_ ,” Maura said dangerously, “it will not be comfortable, but we will find space for everyone. You can all spend the night. Mostly because I think bribery is the only way to get you to see a doctor,” she added to Blue, who shrugged and looked unrepentant, because Maura probably wasn’t wrong.

Gansey cleared his throat. “Maybe, seeing as this is a special circumstance, you would let me call a doctor I know in town, just this once, who could be persuaded to come by and see to your eye here, so no one has to go to the hospital.”

“Ugh,” Blue said, before he’d finished talking. “You think just because you died I’m suddenly going to let you pay my medical bills?”

Maura, the one who actually would be paying Blue’s medical bills, paused in rummaging through a mail pile for her keys to roll her eyes. “I don’t think he really thought it,” she said mildly.

Gansey smiled, a little chagrined but still winning. “Worth a shot,” he said.

“Does anyone else require professional medical attention?” Maura asked. The four boys looked around at each other. At least, Adam and Gansey and Cheng looked around at everyone including Ronan. Ronan didn’t lift his eyes from the table. Ronan was the worst off out of all of them, but even he didn’t seem physically damaged in a way that warranted a medical degree, so they shook their heads.

“Great! As soon as I find my keys, we can go,” Maura said, and left to rummage somewhere else. They heard her calling up the stairs to Calla.

“I’ll go with you,” Gansey said.

“Don’t be stupid, we’ll just be waiting around for hours,” Blue said. “And I’m not even that hurt!” She was holding a dish towel to her eye and her blood had already soaked through all the layers of it, to make one small red spot on the clean side. Adam felt vaguely ill with guilt over what his hands had done, and was really looking forward to her being professionally patched up again.

“I’ll go, too,” Cheng said. “Keep Richardman company while we wait.”

“Honestly,” she said, “this is super unnecessary. I would be happy to know all of you were choosing the best couch cushions to sleep on.”

“We can do that later,” Gansey assured her.

Ronan said, “I’m going home.” He said it like it was a sigh.

“I wish you would stay here,” Blue said, and he looked up at her. She had said it not like she was asking him to stay, but like she was just letting him know that she really wanted it. Just so he knew. And maybe that was why he didn’t snap at her.

He only said, “Too bad,” without heat, and pushed his chair back and stood.

Blue shot Adam a look.

Ronan was going to be his worst, most impenetrable self about this, but Adam gathered the last of his reserves and said, before Ronan could leave the room, “I’ll go with you.” He tried to make it sound like Blue, like he was letting Ronan know something rather than asking him for something, but he could hear in his voice that it hadn’t worked. He had put too much fight in it, been too prepared to be rebuked.

Ronan prickled immediately. He spared one haughty look at Adam, said, “No, thanks,” and stalked off calling for Chainsaw.

Gansey looked ready to jump in and help, but Adam waved him off in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, and followed Ronan. When Adam found him in the darkened, empty reading room, he was removing a gold coin from Chainsaw’s beak and placing it down next to her on the mantle. “That’s not yours,” Ronan told her sternly, and plucked her from the shelf.

“You know, you did drive me here,” Adam said, from the doorway. “You can’t just ditch me.”

“So you want to come pick up your piece-of-shit car? Fine. It’s bringing down the blue-book value of everything in the zip code anyway.”

“No,” Adam said, and realized too late that maybe this was Ronan offering an out. A way that they could go back to the Barns without having to talk about it, or convince Ronan of it. But whatever. They were going to have to do this eventually, and maybe sooner was better. “I’m staying with you,” Adam said. And for just a second, it hurt, because this was hard for him too, and of course Ronan had to be impossible over it.

Even in the dark he could make out the hard lines of Ronan’s face. Ronan pushed past him to the back door and let himself out. Adam scrubbed a hand over his face. He was tired, and didn’t want a fight, but this one was worth it, he thought.

Ronan was out past Blue’s beech tree, near the fence, pushing greenery apart with the toe of his boot and muttering to Orphan Girl: “Come on, you creep, where are you, time to go.”

Adam started at the other side of the yard, and peered around the base of the bushes. They met in the middle and found her there, sleeping curled like a fawn. Or in something like sleep. She had her hands pressed tight over her ears.

For a helpless second, Ronan tilted his head back and looked up at the stars.

“Is she okay?” Adam asked. He knelt and held the branches apart to watch her sleep or not sleep. She was rarely this still, certainly not when both he and Ronan were around and could be played with. He was reminded of what a dog was like when it got sick, truly sick, reticent and stripped of its personality.

“I have no idea,” Ronan said. His voice was angry, but it was so obvious he was scared that Adam let it go.

“Hey,” Adam said to her, and touched her leg lightly. She wrapped herself up tighter. It unnerved him to think of an Orphan Girl that wouldn’t follow Ronan, that would willingly be left behind somewhere he wasn’t. Somewhere non-Cabeswater, anyway. “Do you want me to—” Adam looked at Ronan and gestured to the girl. He didn’t want to be presumptuous by picking her up as Ronan sometimes did. She wasn’t like Chainsaw. Or rather, she was almost exactly like Chainsaw, but it was harder to accept it because she looked a lot like a little girl.

“I want you to leave me alone,” Ronan said flatly. He nudged Adam aside with a boot against his shoe, bent, and scooped Orphan Girl into his arms. Chainsaw moved obligingly to his shoulder to make room.

“Stop being a dick,” Adam said. It came out less nice than he meant it to, but he was hurt. Only hours ago, when Adam had lost control of his own arms, and been scared out of his mind, Ronan had held him together. And only hours before _that_ they’d been kissing. And now somehow they were in Blue Sargent’s backyard and Ronan was all barbs, his hackles raised, unwilling or unable to show any softness. In other words, he was his old self.

Adam stood and brushed off his pants, although they were a lost cause at this point. “What’s your problem? I’m being serious, Ronan,” he added. “Why are you treating me like... like we don’t know each other?”

Ronan scoffed, but he was looking very hard away from Adam, which meant he was barely keeping it together. “I don’t need you to babysit me,” he finally said, voice tight with strain. A muscle in his jaw worked but his lips were pressed shut. He didn’t say any more.

“That’s not what this is,” Adam said. He really didn’t want to fight anymore. “You trust me, right?”

Ronan made a _tsch_ sound.

“Come on,” Adam said, and Ronan nodded minutely, still looking furiously away from him.

“So trust me,” Adam said. He let his voice sound as tired and sad as he felt. “If you really want to be alone, I’m not gonna force you. But I thought you might not. And I wanna go back with you. Can I go with you?”

Ronan let out a long breath and met Adam’s eyes. His stare was demanding, even in the dark yard, even holding a fawn girl to his chest. Ronan was intense enough that he always got his point across, even if it was sometimes not the point he intended to make. “Whatever,” he said. “Fine. But you should know, I’m not going to be very good company.”

“Yeah, I don’t care,” Adam said. He smiled. “Never bothered me before.”

“Cute,” Ronan said dangerously, and shouldered past him. Adam followed in quiet triumph.

They met the others out front, both Cheng and Gansey going to the hospital with Blue, which, Adam agreed, seemed super unnecessary, but which did not surprise or trouble him. Adam accepted hugs or knuckles from all of them, and let Maura smooth back his hair. Ronan did not, but he did talk quietly to Gansey and Blue for a second, and Adam heard him say something that made Blue laugh, sharp and sudden in the quiet night.

“See you tomorrow,” Blue said to him. “You, too,” she said to Adam.

“Yeah,” he said, easily. “I have to work in the afternoon, if I’m not fired for missing two shifts.” He would worry about that later. He couldn’t worry about it now. “But, yeah.”

They parted, and Adam felt his heart tugged with all of them. But sitting in the front seat of Ronan’s car, what he felt most of all was grateful, because he didn’t have to leave Ronan, too. God, he was glad to have Ronan. Adam rested his elbow on the windowsill and settled down for the car ride. Ronan’s BMW was one of Adam’s most reliable sleeping spots. And Ronan while driving was one of the absolute best versions of Ronan. Purposeful, clever, decisive, very good at what he was doing, happy.

(Adam had the vague, shivery thought of someday confessing this to Ronan: _I love when you’re driving_.)

Ronan deposited Orphan Girl in the backseat, and she seemed to wake up a little, poking around through his things and making a nest for herself out of some discarded sweatshirts. Both she and Chainsaw were much calmer than they’d been on the earlier car ride.

Ronan dropped into the driver’s seat and when he cranked the key and the engine turned over, he relaxed by maybe one degree. He punched buttons on the stereo as they drove down Blue’s street, and once they turned onto the main road, something loud and low was rumbling through Adam’s seat and out Ronan’s window. When they’d made it up into the higher gears out on the back roads, and the car opened up a little, they were both breathing easier.

He rolled down his own window and let his hand slide through the cold night air, even though it made the wind whip around in the cab. Orphan Girl was sleeping soundly, and Chainsaw seemed to be unbothered on the floor in the back. They had both probably had to get used to fast cars at night a long time ago.

They had both probably been created to feel at home in fast cars at night.

Adam was not sure what he had been created for.

They turned up the Barns’s long driveway, snaking into the dense woods. Ronan was watching the headlights carefully, because small animals darted out in front of cars on this gravel drive sometimes. Adam had seen it happen lots of times. A fox would shoot out from the underbrush, and be caught stark white in the gleam of headlights, little haunches tense, flashes of shining eyes and dark nose. If you didn’t want to kill something, you’d keep your eyes open.

A handful of fireflies glittered in the fields, although it was too late in the year for them.

“What do you call non-dream things?” Adam asked.

Ronan flicked his gaze to Adam, then back to the lane. “Is that a riddle?”

“No, just—It’s only dream fireflies that are out at this time of year, right? So these must be dreams. Not real ones. Not non-dream ones.”

Ronan cut the wheel and curved them into a parking spot in front of the house. “You sound high,” he told Adam.

“No I don’t,” Adam said, frowning as he climbed out of the car into the big night. His voice was quieter out here, swallowed up by the space. “I was just wondering. Is that what the world looks like to you? Dreamed and not dreamed?” He leaned against the door after he stood, tilting his head back and finding the place where the black, massive, moving shapes of the trees met the night sky.

Everything was big here, in the heart of this valley, and the two of them were very small.

Ronan opened one of the back doors for the Orphan Girl, and she scampered out and galloped ahead of them.

Chainsaw in hand, Ronan met Adam at the passenger door. “It’s more like real and not real,” Ronan said, obscurely. He motioned with his head for Adam to come on, and they set off up the path in step. Ronan’s face never betrayed his exhaustion much, not like Adam’s, but Adam thought he could see it in the drowsy lift of Ronan’s boots as they walked. Toward the house, Ronan said, “Everything I can take out of a dream is super real, in the dream. Ultra real. When I’m awake, some things are like that too.”

The sound of their shoes on the porch was almost unbearably familiar and homey: the gentle creaking of the wood, the slight echo from the porch roof. “What things?” Adam asked.

Ronan unlocked the door and they stepped into the dark house. Warm and still; the scent of cedar and boxwood. Ronan breathed out audibly, and Adam locked the deadbolt behind them. He wanted to know if _he_ was one of the super real things, but either answer would embarrass him, so he left it.

They took off their shoes and wandered into the living room, Ronan’s hand trailing along the wall. He let Chainsaw down and she hopped off to do bird things. Ronan left the lights off, but it was easy to see, starlight and moon through the windows throwing the house into black and blue.

“I know she was a dream,” Ronan said abruptly. His voice was odd, neutral and higher pitched. Alarm bells rang in Adam’s head, and he knew immediately who Ronan was talking about. “You only met her when she was in Cabeswater,” Ronan went on. He scuffed his socked foot against a floorboard. “Before he died, it was different. You never would have been able to tell. I know it seems like it shouldn’t matter so much.” Ronan shook his head and didn’t look at Adam.

“No, it doesn’t,” Adam said. His heart felt like it had stopped. It shouldn’t have been possible for him to have already fucked up this badly. “I didn’t mean that. I just wasn’t thinking, when I was talking about dreams like that, Ronan, I’m just an idiot.” It wasn’t _fair_ that Adam was so bad at being close to another person. He had not learned it early enough, and he had to practice it to get it right, and his slow uptake meant that people stayed farther away from him, because he often got things wrong. How was he ever supposed to know anyone?

Ronan met his eyes suddenly, something desperate in his look, and a stubborn set to his jaw. “And, it’s like, she was already gone once, right? When she was asleep all that time, she might as well have been dead.”

Ronan didn’t lie, but there were versions of the truth that were pointlessly harsh.

Adam shook his head _no_. He took a few steps closer to Ronan. Palms up: no weapons. “You saved her,” he said quietly. “And you would’ve figured out how to bring her back here if it wasn’t for the demon. I know she’s real, Ronan, she’s your mom.” His voice hitched on the word _mom_. He swallowed the lump in his throat and made himself keep looking into Ronan’s eyes. This was not about _Adam’s_ mom, and he was not going to think about her here, where an actual mom had lived and raised her kids. “I’m sorry I said that stuff about dreams. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I’m just an idiot, man, it wasn’t anything.”

“I know, I know, shut up, shut up, fuck.” Ronan spun around and pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes. He made a fist and slammed it toward the hutch, but slowed it at the last second and touched his knuckles there, making no sound at all. “It’s not that. I don’t care what you said.” He turned back to Adam. He held his fist in his other hand, as though he’d punched a brick wall and hurt himself. “I need to—” he screwed up his lips in an uncomfortable tangle— “do something. I don’t know.”

“Yeah, okay, sure,” Adam said, kind of desperately. If Ronan cried, he was going to cry. “We could break something.”

Ronan raised his eyebrows. “Like what? Our bones?”

“No, like—I don’t know exactly, but there’s got to be some old stuff around here that we could smash. How about the wood you replaced in the fence? Did you already take it to the dump?”

“If you think I haul trash anywhere, you’re drunk. I _burnt_ it. And there’s not much else around, really. Maybe some windshields in the garage that don’t fit any of our cars, but...”

“That’ll work. So?” Adam offered. “What do you say, wanna break some shit?”

Ronan looked interested despite himself, but shook his head. “Ehh,” he said. “They’ll just shatter, it won’t even be satisfying. And then we’ll be cleaning up glass forever. But hey—” He pointed a finger at Adam— “I like this violent thought process. You’re right, destroying stuff _is_ good for you.” He gave Adam his real smile, fond and quick. They both thought of Noah. “I’ll amuse myself, I promise,” Ronan said, patronizingly. “Do what you want.”

Adam made tea. He could hear Ronan, moving restlessly through the house. When Adam returned to the living room, mug in hand, Ronan was stood in the wide living room window, looking out into the dark lawn, thumb turning the lock open and closed, open and closed.

Adam watched him, not sure how close he should come. He hesitated into the silence, but why was he here if not to say something when Ronan looked like this? "Hey, Ronan, it's okay, you know—"

"Don't," Ronan interrupted without turning, his voice thick with scorn.

Adam rolled his eyes. "Sure," he said sarcastically. "Don't know what I was thinking."

Ronan turned and threw himself into a sitting position on the windowsill, facing Adam. He looked chastened, but only a little. "Whatever," he said amiably. Watching Adam actively, and not trying to start a fight, which, for him, was as good as being nice. He didn’t want to talk about that, but he seemed to want something.

Adam grew abruptly self-conscious under Ronan's gaze, even in the dark room, and shoved his free hand into his pocket. Ronan could be so _—focused_. "So you aren’t tired?" Adam asked.

Ronan said, "Nope."

“I’m going to fall asleep in about two minutes,” Adam said. He felt stupid with sleepiness, unable to say anything except what he was thinking. He sat on the couch and toyed with the string on the tea bag. He leaned over the mug a little and let the steam warm his face.

The sound of wings and a landing right next to Adam’s shoulder made him start. “Jesus,” he said. Chainsaw gave him a bored look and then hopped down to the couch seat, the coffee table, then the floor and the window seat, next to Ronan. She pecked at the hem of his shirt affectionately, and he scooped her up and deposited her on his shoulder.

They were quiet while Adam drank his tea, every sip making it harder and harder to get up from the couch. If he wasn’t covered in layers of dirt and fear sweat and whatever else, he would just fall asleep.

“Could I take a shower?” he asked. For some reason it came out tentative. That old, sad politeness, that fear of imposing that Adam had had knocked into him at a young age... it was tough to shake.

Ronan looked up from Chainsaw and nodded. “Here,” he said, and led the way down the hallway and up a half flight of stairs.

“Guest bathroom.” He flipped the light switch and laughed unkindly when Adam squeezed his eyes shut against the sudden brightness. Ronan touched a door across from the sink. “Towels,” he said.

“Why do all your sentences have a two-word limit right now?” Adam asked, provoking him a little, which worked.

Ronan scoffed. “Fuck off. You can find clothes yourself, then. You know where Declan’s room is.”

“Whatever,” Adam said. “Okay.” And then he also said, “Thanks,” but Ronan was already stalking out of the room, disappearing into the maze of the house. Adam wanted to do something to Ronan, to feel the bones of his wrist or fall asleep on his shoulder. But who could know what Ronan wanted at a given moment?

Under the water, the day sluicing off of him, Adam thought about his mother. He’d been thinking about Ronan’s mom a lot, so his own in the back of his mind, just out of reach. He knew he _needed_ to think about her, and the shower was typically a good place to get stuff like that out of the way. You could give in for a minute and get out and still be clean.

The thing was, a demon had turned Adam’s hands into fists today. Into claws and a rope. It was almost too perfect: wasn’t that Adam’s greatest fear, his metaphorical demon? His father’s anger taking root in him. Adam was eighteen, and no child. He was all alone in the world, except maybe for Ronan, and his three other friends, one of whom was gone, maybe for good. So he had three living friends, and was alone otherwise, and even though part of that thought warmed him, the _alone_ part of it was terrible, and for just a few minutes, Adam let himself feel that part.

He had no mother to hold him when he cried and he never would. He tucked his head down against the wall and touched the tile and sobbed, shamefully, quietly enough that he didn’t think anyone outside the room would be able to hear. He had no childhood home that wasn’t marred, coated in rotting black and swarming with hungry, stray dogs. It was so ugly there. Adam was so ugly, to come from that.

Also, he was a terrible person, to be crying over this when Ronan had just lost his own mom. Not lost her—had her taken from him, seen her strewn, bloody form.

God, Ronan, Ronan. Adam wanted so much from him. It was dangerous to think about. It gave away such a big piece of him, to admit how much he wanted it.

His fingertips were pruned from the shower water. That was long enough. Adam stood up straight and put himself back together. He washed his face again, as though it could erase the fact that he had cried. He looked down at himself: long and thin and freckled and wet, his whole form.

 _Ronan’s even taller_ , Adam thought, and his mind stalled on the idea of exactly what Ronan’s thighs might look like, compared to Adam’s. He brought his thumbnail to his mouth and pictured the length of Ronan’s legs, not compared to Adam’s.

What were him and Ronan now? Not dating, not together. Friends. Interested in each other, maybe. People who had kissed. It didn’t sound like much, but it felt like a lot.

Once he’d gotten out and dried himself off, Adam eased open the door and peered into the hallway to judge if he could get away with walking to Declan's room in a towel. The clothes he'd been wearing seemed even filthier now that he was clean, and he wasn’t excited about picking them up off the floor to wear again. He was a little beat up, but his body felt reasonably strong and very much his own for once. It was sort of nice. He made a living by not being prissy about stuff, but he wanted, just this once, to not have to do the thing that didn’t feel good.

It was dark and still in the hallway, so Adam thought probably he could make it. Anyway, it was likelier that Ronan was off communing with the wilder aspects of the property than hanging around in here, if Adam had to guess.

Then Adam saw that it didn't matter either way: folded at his feet just outside the door was a set of clothes. He knelt and scooped them up, sweatpants, boxers, and a t-shirt. They were very soft, with no care tags or logos, and Adam didn't know if they were dreamed or just expensive. They fit, which tipped the probability toward a dream origin, but not all the way: Adam was built similarly to Ronan but was a little smaller, so old clothes of his were about Adam’s size. And Matthew was shorter and broader than Adam, but he wore some things big by choice, so Adam could wear some of his things as well, if he didn’t mind that they were a little baggy.

Adam’s throat got tight, and he found himself crying again. He held a soft, damp towel to his face and took slow breaths. He loved wearing these clothes Ronan had given him, and somehow that love made his heart ache in a way that felt like sadness. Maybe love and sadness were always linked.

Part of him wanted to go crawl into bed, lick his wounds in private, find Ronan in the morning when he was stronger. But the part that wanted to be near Ronan won.

Adam cleaned up his face for the second time.

In the hallway, he paused at a framed photograph of two boys in a wagon. Toddler Ronan reaching for something in the grass, baby Matthew sucking on a pacifier, legs in the air like a turtle on its back. How strange it felt to be alone here, in a place that was all Ronan.

Following a hunch, Adam opened the front door and observed the night. A dull thwack sounded nearby: something colliding with wood. Again. A pause. The sound again.

Adam eyed his discarded shoes on the floor with distaste, but it was too cold without them. He pulled them on and borrowed a jacket from the rack, and shouldered out into the night.

It was chilly and the air smelled of leaves. When Adam let his eyes adjust to the dark by looking up at the sky, he could pick out bats darting and swooping, darker black against the night sky.

He followed the noise around a corner of the house, and there was Ronan, bathed in the glow of a floating dream light, chopping wood. He didn't turn, but he paused and resumed chopping in such a way that it was clear he knew Adam was there. "Hey," Adam said anyway, when he was as close as he could get without being in the axe-swinging radius.

Ronan swung another log from the massive pile and stood it on the stump. He turned and gave Adam a look that was also a dare, defying him to say something. "Parrish," Ronan said in greeting. There was something happening with his face, Adam realized slowly. It was soft, raw.

He too had been crying.

Adam wanted to tell him it was okay, but he didn't think that would be well received, so he tried to make his voice sound like that as he said, "Ronan."

"Adam," Ronan mocked, in the same tone.

He was impossible and infuriating. But just for tonight, that was all right. "You going to keep chopping wood?" Adam asked.

Ronan tossed the axe up into the air, sharply swinging, and caught it on the downstroke. Adam's hand twitched up to stop Ronan grabbing the blade, instinctive, and Ronan laughed at him. Adam gave him an unimpressed face, and Ronan said, "Yeah, and then I'm gonna have a fire."

That made nothing at all clear, but Adam sat down in the grass and flopped onto his back so he could look up at the stars. "Okay," he said.

Ronan was still for a moment, then the sound of swishing fabric as he moved, then the axe hitting wood, again, and pieces of the log thumping to the dirt, one then the other. For a while, there was only the night. The quiet sounds of effort in Ronan's throat as he hefted the axe. Adam's breath puffing out in clouds that drifted up and joined the stars. The bats overhead. The glittering lightning bugs Adam caught from the corner of his eye.

Adam fell halfway asleep. It was too cold to really rest, but he drifted. After fifteen or twenty minutes, or half an hour, he yawned hugely.

"Go to bed, if you're so tired," Ronan rumbled, and the axe swinging paused.

Adam propped himself up on his elbows to look at Ronan. “I guess I should. I’m freezing. These sweatpants aren’t really warm enough for the ground.” They felt woefully thin out here, with cold, damp grass touching him.

“No shit,” Ronan said.

 _“You_ left them for me,” Adam reminded him.

“Because _you_ said you were going to sleep!”

Adam fought off a smile—how nice to argue about something this dumb—and said, “I’m on my way.” He paused, pursed his lips, unsure how to ask what he wanted to ask. “D’you want to be alone?”

Ronan raised his eyebrows.

“Fuck off,” Adam said immediately, with a laugh in his voice. “You can deal with me asking you a direct question.”

Ronan pointed at him and said, “That’s what you think.” He turned, hefted the axe, and swung it again. Adam thought that was his answer: Ronan would go back to chopping wood in the middle of the night rather than come in. But he’d struck the stump with the axe, and the blade lodged there when he let go of the handle. “Well, don’t just stand there, grab some wood,” Ronan said to him.

Adam heaved a dramatic sigh for Ronan’s benefit, and filled his arms with split logs as Ronan did the same.

“Come on, we can’t all just lay around, Parrish, this is a working farm, you know,” Ronan said, walking diagonally into Adam and making him stumble as they started back toward the house.

“That’s debatable,” Adam said. “I think you’d have to produce something to be a _working_ farm.”

“Oh, I produce all kinds of things,” Ronan said, which, fair enough. He nudged Adam’s elbow with his. “And you’re over here sleeping in the grass and getting my father’s favorite coat dirty.”

Adam twisted his neck to try and peer at the backs of his own elbows. Probably they _were_ dirty, which, if he was being honest, he had not even considered. The coat seemed like a functional piece of clothing meant to protect someone from mud. He winced. “Sorry, I’ll clean it. I didn’t know.”

Ronan’s face broke into a sharp smile. “I’m messing with you. It’s a barn jacket; it’s supposed to get dirty. I’m not even sure it was my dad’s.”

“Good one. You’re funny. A lot of good jokes,” Adam said drily. But he was relieved, and shouldered Ronan in retaliation so he hit the railing as they climbed the porch stairs.

Ronan shoved Adam off as well as he could with an armful of logs. “Don’t be so easy, then,” he said. “Leave those there.” He knocked a boot against a spot beside the door. Adam set down his logs and followed Ronan in, to where he was filling the rack near the fireplace with wood.

Ronan stood and turned to look at Adam. His face was serious and thoughtful, and Adam knew he needed to say something but didn’t know what to say. He looked at Ronan standing there all small in his big coat, and said, “Okay. It’s really late. Let’s go to bed.”

Ronan looked down and pulled an expression that said that was not what he was hoping Adam would say. It hurt Adam’s heart, abruptly, and in the second before Ronan could reply Adam said quickly, “You know I thought you were gonna die. Back there. Today.”

Ronan looked up at him sharply. “So did I. I didn’t, though.” He glanced toward the stairs. “I’m going to take a shower. You can sleep where you want.”

“I... need more information than that,” Adam said after a moment. He pulled off his coat and held out his hand for Ronan’s.

Ronan took his off grudgingly and handed it over. “What information?”

“I don’t know. Don’t be—” Adam shook his head. He’d decided at some point that the best strategy for Ronan right now was to be very straightforward. “I don’t know what we’re doing. I came over so you wouldn’t be alone. And because I didn’t want to be alone.” He wished he wasn’t blushing. “I don’t have to like, sleep in your bed. But I could.”

Ronan tried to fight off a smile and then gave in to it, flashing a grin at Adam. “Aw,” he said.

“Fuck off,” Adam said at once, smiling too.

Ronan said, “Come on.” He led Adam up the stairs, clearly glad to have the upper hand back.

Ronan flipped on a bedside light. He flung an arm around. “Make yourself at home. By that I mean: you can pass out.”

“That’s, like, the nicest thing anyone’s ever said to me,” Adam said, sitting down on the edge of the bed.

“That’s sad,” Ronan said agreeably. “I’ll be back in a few.” He swept out of the room, leaving Adam to stretch out on the bed. It was stupidly comfortable. How long had it been since Adam had really slept? A few hours in Ronan’s car last night. And before that he’d been up for a day, or two days, depending on how you counted the time in the cave. He got under the covers and kicked off his sweatpants.

And then the next thing he knew, the light was off and Ronan was across the room in an old t-shirt and gym shorts rummaging through a drawer. Chainsaw fluffed her feathers and arranged some papers on top of the dresser into a nest for the night. Adam didn’t remember closing his eyes, but he was blinking awake.

“Go back to sleep,” Ronan said without looking up.

“How’d you know I was awake?” Adam mumbled, dumb.

“I’m magic, duh,” Ronan said.

Adam flopped onto his back and kicked his legs under the covers, getting comfortable. He tucked an arm under his head, halfway between sleep and wakefulness. Was this how Ronan felt when he dreamt?

Ronan crawled into the bed, leaving a modest space between the two of them. He propped his head up on a pillow and toyed with his headphones in one hand while he scrolled through music on his phone with the other.

Adam watched the blue light on Ronan’s face until Ronan looked over at him. “Go to sleep,” he said again, but his voice was gentle and he could only meet Adam’s eyes for a second.

“I am. You go to sleep,” Adam said, arguing for the sake of it, like a kid. Adam turned onto his side so his bent knees touched the side of Ronan’s leg.

“I’m never sleeping again,” Ronan said. He plugged the headphone cable into his phone.

“Good luck with that,” Adam said. “Hey, can you sleep without dreaming?”

“No. Maybe if I’m really, really drunk. Even then...” Ronan shook his head. “Fuck.” He rolled away from Adam, pressing his face to the pillow.

“Ronan,” Adam said, and touched his shoulder. When Ronan didn’t respond, Adam scooted closed and wrapped an arm around him. He pressed his nose to the back of Ronan’s neck as Ronan took shaky breaths. “I think... you should call your brothers,” Adam said quietly. He wasn’t sure how Ronan would take this, but it had to be said.

Ronan sniffed loudly and said, “No shit.” He didn’t move away from Adam.

“Go to sleep, seriously. It’s okay,” Adam said.

“I thought you were going to die, too.” Ronan sounded sort of blank, helpless not to say this. Adam’s heart tugged. “I thought it was going to kill you. And now Matthew’s—he going to—”

“He’s fine; we talked to him,” Adam said, surprised. He was afraid of a lot of things, but that wasn’t one of them, at least for the moment.

“He’s fine like Orphan Girl is fine?” Ronan snapped.

“It’s like you said, though, right? It’s just because of Cabeswater.”

“Wait.” Ronan flung himself onto his back so his face was right below Adam’s. His eyes were wet and big and they scared Adam, although they did not make him want to turn away. “You mean her and Chainsaw, how they’re acting?”

“Yeah. They’re like—” Adam cast around for a word. It could be hard to translate his understanding of ley line magic into language— “unmoored without it. They’re panicking because it disappeared. But they’re not _dying_ ; Chainsaw’s already way more chill. I mean, this is just my best guess, but I think I’m right. I think it’s just like before. As long as you’re alive, they’re okay—and I know, we have to fix that, too, but for right now—”

“They need a new Cabeswater,” Ronan said. And when he said it, he sounded sure of it. He looked at Adam like Adam had challenged him to a street race. “I have to make a new Cabestwater.”

“Yeah,” Adam said. The enormity of it was easier to deal with in his half-asleep state. So Ronan would just dream another forest, or something, into existence. Oh, well. “I guess so. Sorry, I didn’t—I thought you kind of knew that. Sorry.”

Ronan was still looking at him with something raw in his face, lips slightly parted. He shook his head at Adam’s second apology. Adam had seen a hundred expressions on Ronan’s face in the last two days that he’d never seen before, and wanted to see a hundred more. “Man, I can barely think,” Ronan said. “I’ve been awake for three days. _I_ don’t know.”

“Okay.” Adam settled down next to Ronan, facing him on one pillow, and blinked at him with heavy eyelids. “Well. So go to sleep.”

“You go to sleep,” Ronan said, but he shut his eyes.

Adam smiled, and closed his eyes. His knees met Ronan’s under the covers. He listened to Ronan’s breathing, deep and even. Ronan had always had impressive control over his own sleep. How many times when they were dreaming had Adam watched him simply decide to sleep, and then do it? It was different for Adam, who craved rest but couldn’t always find it.

Tonight it was easy. He was like Ronan: he knew that as soon as he let himself, he would walk into his own dreams. Once he was pretty sure Ronan was out, he let go of himself, and drifted off.

+

Ronan stepped into a dream. Gray sand stretched to the horizon in every direction. There was nothing and nothing. And then the ground opened and pyramids grew. Ronan stumbled back. Everything shook. They were the size of skyscrapers, the biggest things he’d ever seen. And they were solid: if he touched them, he could bring them back.

He tried not to touch them.

Adam appeared around a corner and walked right up to Ronan. He peered at him like he was looking at an animal in a tank, like Ronan’s skin was the tank and inside of him was the animal.

The lanes between pyramids resolved into city streets bustling with cars and cafes. Noise everywhere.

Ronan closed his eyes and made it quiet. He willed something nice.

He opened his eyes and his throat burned. He was on a cliff overlooking a valley, blank rock for miles back and down, except for one copse of trees. It was all dangerously present. If he woke now, he’d bring it all back. And he’d never had complete control over a landscape like this. Something was way off.

Still, he walked into the trees. The forest was cooler. At the center was a meadow, and Ronan had done it, there was something nice there: Adam laying in the grass, head pillowed on his arms. Ronan knelt next to him. He smoothed back Adam’s hair, and closed his eyes.

The dream went on.

+

Adam woke once, deep into the night, when Ronan did. Something thudded to the floor—Ronan’s phone, at a guess—when Ronan crept out of bed. Adam burrowed into the pillow and stayed.

+

The next time Adam woke, sun beamed into the room. Adam was really, really comfortable, and Ronan was back. He was pressed warmly to Adam’s chest, and Adam was spooned up right behind him, like he’d cuddled him in his sleep. He could hear faint music coming from Ronan’s earphones, and under Adam’s hand Ronan’s arm was moving: tendons lifting, small, like he was scrolling through his phone.

Which meant that Ronan was awake, and could feel that Adam was pressed up against him. Like, fully up against him. Like, Ronan’s ass was in his lap. This was already the furthest they’d ever gone together. Which, according to Adam’s calculations, meant it was the furthest Ronan had ever gone with anybody.

Adam didn’t know the rules for this yet, but if Ronan was awake, he was choosing to stay here.

Adam was embarrassed and turned on and wanted to know what would happen next. Ronan must’ve felt him wake up, but he hadn’t reacted, so Adam made the first move. He wrapped his arm around Ronan’s middle and pulled him closer, snuggling into his back. When he moved, his muscles protested: he felt like he’d gotten hit by a truck yesterday. Far from being cured, his body felt a lot worse than last night.

Still, Ronan smelled really good, and Adam had played through worse.

Ronan tugged off his headphones and Adam heard them hit the carpet. He still couldn’t see his face. Ronan’s chest lifted and fell with a deep breath. He grabbed Adam’s hand and held it against his ribs, and then he flexed his leg and shifted back in a way that made Adam gasp and turn his nose into Ronan’s neck. Something like a shiver went through Ronan.

Adam didn’t even know if Ronan was hard, too, and he was too chickenshit to slide his hand down and find out without at least saying good morning first.

“Are you—” Adam said, but the words didn’t come out. His voice wasn’t working yet. He tried again: “How do you feel? You hurt?”

“Don’t talk,” Ronan said, the words rumbling against Adam’s chest.

Adam exhaled a laugh with no sound. He splayed his fingers over Ronan’s ribs, t-shirt soft against Adam’s palm. “What? Why?”

“If you talk, you’re not gonna do it,” Ronan said, and then he took Adam’s hand and pulled it down over his stomach to his dick.

“Oh,” Adam said, “god.” He wrapped his fingers around Ronan’s length through his clothes, curious to feel the shape of him. It was so good he could almost feel it on his own body when he touched Ronan, like they were connected with an electric current. Ronan tipped his head back, crown of his skull to Adam’s forehead, and arched his back. With difficulty, Adam loosened his touch until his hand was just hovering over Ronan, on the fabric of his basketball shorts. He could still feel the heat of him. “I just—feel like—”

“Shut up,” Ronan mumbled, his breathing audible.

“—I spent the day getting boulders thrown at me,” Adam finished, ignoring him. “Or like a herd of animals stampeded over me. So tell me if you’re hurt, too. So I don’t hurt you.” He moved his hand to the front of Ronan’s hip and pressed. Ronan was all muscle, all the way down.

“I feel like someone punched me in the throat,” Ronan said, “and then drove a car onto me and left it for awhile. But I don’t give a shit. This doesn’t hurt.” He reached back over his shoulder and touched the side of Adam’s face, his ear, before settling his hand on Adam’s neck. “If you’re cool,” he added, in a quieter voice.

“I’m good,” Adam said. “We don’t need to move that much anyway.”

“That’s what I’m saying,” Ronan agreed. He did that thing where he rubbed himself back against Adam again, and Adam slid his hand into Ronan’s shorts and boxers and wrapped his fingers around him. Ronan made a surprised sound, needy and high. The skin-on-skin contact made it ten degrees hotter under the covers. “Can you get off like this?” Ronan asked, voice low.

Adam squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his mouth to Ronan’s neck in silent thanks for letting Adam hear him say _get off._ Ronan’s skin tasted warm and clean. “Yeah,” Adam said. Amazing that he had managed to not already come from this. He rocked his hips forward in time with Ronan and jerked Ronan faster.

Adam came first, gasping and hugging Ronan to him convulsively. It felt so unbearably nice to have Ronan this close that Adam wanted to eat him, or throw himself off a cliff, or something.

“Adam,” Ronan said over and over, “Adam.” He was also cursing a lot.

Adam caught his breath against Ronan’s shoulder, a degree of guilt in his stomach that Ronan hadn’t gotten off yet. As soon as he was coordinated enough to jerk Ronan off again he did, and as soon as he resumed stroking him Ronan made another surprised sound and finally twisted his head around so he could look at Adam. His expression was broken apart. Adam had known it intellectually, but it was so different and bigger to experience it: Ronan had wanted Adam to see him like this, exposed. He looked almost frightened, but not of Adam, or not exactly. Mostly he looked like he wanted to be kissed.

“Oh,” Adam said, awed and sad, his heart overflowing. Because how had they not been looking at each other? How had they not been kissing this whole time? He touched Ronan’s cheek, his soft, buzzed hair, even his eyelashes, as gently as he could with the rough pad of his thumb. And then he took Ronan’s face in his hands and kissed and kissed him.

When Ronan was close he started saying Adam’s name again and again, so Adam mouthed at his throat instead of kissing him. Ronan was still all twisted around; he’d stayed pressed up against Adam, craning his neck to kiss, even though Adam had already come. He tensed under Adam’s hands and breathed, “Please, please,” even though Ronan seemed to already have what he wanted, was already coming, hot and slick in Adam’s hand, which felt both very familiar and not at all.

They kissed slowly, and Adam eased his hand out of Ronan’s pants and hesitated before wiping it off on his own boxers. They were already shot, anyway.

Ronan said, “Gross,” and Adam smiled.

Ronan scooted over and flopped onto his back, then turned so they were facing each other. His face, always so stony, was flushed red around his lips and nose where they’d been crushed against Adam, and in a sweep of heated color on both cheeks.

“So, that worked out,” Adam said.

But if he thought they were going to bask in the afterglow, or whatever, he was wrong. Ronan shut his eyes, like he was collecting himself, and when he opened them there was something troubled and apologetic there. “I have to show you something,” he said.

“What—” Adam said, and then furrowed his brow and stopped. “Okay.”

Ronan climbed out of bed, unsteady on his feet for the first couple steps, and Adam followed him. He was still wearing the gross boxer shorts, and it was cold now that his legs were exposed, but this seemed urgent. He crossed his arms over his chest, like that would make him warmer or more presentable. Anyway, if Ronan wasn’t putting on real clothes, they couldn’t be leaving the house. Ronan crept through the hallway and Adam followed.

“Why are you tiptoeing? Should I have a weapon?” Adam asked.

“I’m not.” Ronan glared at him over his shoulder. “And no. Well—I don’t think so.”

They wound their way up a half flight of stairs and around a corner to Ronan’s parents’ room. Ronan stopped inside it, at a door that was probably their closet, and looked at Adam. “Before you ask anything,” he warned, “I don’t know.”

He tensed his jaw, and pulled open the door, and it wasn’t a closet. It was outer space.

Where an interior room should’ve been, there were enough stars to fill the whole night sky, but in miniature, and moving much faster, like a simulation. The inside of the closet wasn’t infinite; swirling stars glittered in a fixed cubic area with no walls. Adam could see galaxies swirling. “Is that the Milky Way? No, wait.” The scale was wrong, and the speed was wrong, but a star blazed and a little fleet of planets orbited around it. It was like an educational model: everything was happening at once. “Is that our solar system?”

“What did I just say?” Ronan asked. He was looking into the closet/outer space too, although he didn’t seem to want to.

“Wait, why are you freaked out?” Adam asked. The stars were beautiful and strange, an impossible trick, but they were contained and they didn’t seem... _terrible_ to Adam in any way.

“No reason,” Ronan said, dangerously dry. “This is fine.”

“This is from last night?” Adam asked.

Ronan nodded miserably. “I woke up and I knew I’d brought something back, but it wasn’t with me. So I went to look for it.”

“It’s pretty,” Adam said, and it was. It was hard to look at in the way some of Ronan’s impossible things were, and harder to look away from.

“Parrish, there is an _Earth_ in there,” Ronan said, and he sounded the most like himself, or the self Adam knew best, that he had so far that day.

“It’s not _real_ ,” Adam said, and he was completely sure of it until he said it. What if this _was_ a tiny real Earth with tiny life on it? What did that mean? Or what if it was a projection of their own solar system, and now Ronan had the power in his closet to destroy the known universe? But it couldn’t be real. “It’s not, like... this is a closet, okay? There’s not air in outer space. These can’t be planets with life on them.”

“You’re a magic astrophysicist now? You don’t know shit about all the fucked-up stuff you can pull out of dreams,” Ronan said.

“I know what is and isn’t physically possible,” Adam said, and they gave each other dirty looks.

Adam sat down on the floor and watched the stars, and after a minute Ronan joined him, their knees touching. “If you look when the Earth spins close to us,” Ronan said, and leaned forward. “...Look.”

Adam looked. An unfathomably detailed blue marble. Then: a flash of silver. “Woah.” Adam said. “Wait. Is that...?”

“Satellites,” Ronan said, voice flat.

“Huh,” Adam said.

“It’s like, out of control,” Ronan said. He scratched at something on the wood floor with his thumbnail, eyes cast down. “In my dreams. The place Cabeswater used to be. It’s throwing off way too much power. Everything’s fucking huge. I’m lucky this is what happened.”

“Did you bring anything else back?”

“Yeah, normal stuff. This was first, but after this it was basic stuff. I still couldn’t control it exactly, but once I knew how careful I had to be it was just little things. A hair brush and a book.”

“So that’s good,” Adam said. He knocked the back of his knuckles against Ronan’s knee. “You’re figuring out how to control it, which means it can be controlled. It’s out of balance, but we can fix that.”

“Yeah,” Ronan said, but he furrowed his brow. “Why didn’t you want me to dream yesterday, at Sargent’s? I said I’d do it and you said it could wait.”

Adam had to cast around in his memory for a moment before he could think of what Ronan was talking about. At Blue’s house, Ronan had offered to dream to find out if Adam’s bargain with Cabeswater was gone. “I knew it might be rough, because of your mom and everything,” Adam said. He hadn’t wanted Ronan to have to perform in that way.

“Oh,” Ronan said. “I thought you knew something bad might happen.”

“Hey,” Adam said. He nodded at the galaxies. “This is okay. It’s not what you think. You’re not gonna destroy the world. And that Earth isn’t full of billions of tiny people. I’ll prove it.” He held his hand flat in the air just outside the closet, waited for his moment, and reached in and plucked the Earth from its orbit. No forcefield stopped him; nothing exploded.

Adam opened his hand and let the marble roll around in it. He touched a fingertip to an ocean and said, “See? It’s an image, or something. It’s a perfect sphere.”

Ronan touched it too, and then he took it and held it inside the closet, in the blank space between galaxies. He opened his hand. The Earth drifted through the air and snapped back into place in its orbit.

Ronan shrugged. “Whatever,” he muttered, but he slid his hand into Adam’s and laced their fingers together.

They watched the stars together until Ronan wanted to go make coffee, and soon, although it should’ve been impossible after everything that had happened, Adam had to leave for work.

Adam daydreamed through most of his shift at the garage about Ronan and what they’d done that morning and what they might do later, and had to keep forcing himself to concentrate. Blue woke up early and found Henry and Gansey already drinking coffee on the back porch. Noah did nothing at all. Back at the Barns, Ronan fed the animals and chopped wood and repaired things that were broken, and failed to make himself think about anything except Adam, and in an upstairs closet, stars twinkled and spun.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> [i'm on tumblr!](http://okaynowkiss.tumblr.com)


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